In Friendship We Trust

The Real Girlfriends of Capitol Hill

Debbie and Gabby got to know each other in 2005, when both were chosen to be leadership fellows by the Aspen Institute, a prestigious think tank whose board includes such political and business heavyweights as Madeleine Albright, Leonard Lauder, and Condoleezza Rice. Debbie, already in Congress, was soon asked by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to colead the Red to Blue Program, recruiting promising Democratic candidates for office in Republican districts. They hit it off immediately. "We were both women who had been elected to our state legislatures early"  Debbie at 26, Gabby at 30  "[and] it was very rare to meet someone like that  so similar to me, who had come to believe that public service was so important," Debbie recalls. "We were kindred spirits." In meeting after meeting, "we would sit together and kibitz  like girlfriends."

During one of the Institute's forums, in New Orleans, Debbie brought husband Steve and Gabby brought Mark, who was then her boyfriend. The two discovered that the two men "are the same size, and they both have blue eyes and bald heads!" Debbie laughs. "It was kind of remarkable that we were both attracted to the same type of guy." While listening to the city's jazz and sipping its famous Hurricane cocktails, Debbie remembers, "Mark and Steve really hit it off." Meanwhile, she was finding Gabby "so impressive and so accomplished, I knew she'd make a very promising Congressional candidate." Gabby, then 35, decided to accept Debbie's recruitment and run for the House of Representatives; Debbie flew to Arizona and stumped on the campaign trail for her.

Meanwhile, Debbie and Kirsten were getting to know each other via long phone conversations, because Kirsten was also considering a national run and had a lot of questions. Kirsten, then a lawyer from upstate New York, had a toddler and wanted to have another baby. Debbie had twins, then 5 years old, and was pregnant when she announced her run for Congress in 2004. She'd won that race and entered the House as the mother of a newborn. Kirsten was able to ask the kinds of questions she couldn't ask a Congressman: "How did you juggle a newborn, an election, your husband, and your child  with the two homes a Congress member needs to keep?" Debbie explained that what worked for her and Steve was for the kids to stay in Florida with their dad (with her parents and some of Steve's family nearby), with Debbie commuting home on weekends. Debbie says, "This way, I was still able to go to Jake's baseball games and be Rebecca's Girl Scout troop leader." During these talks, Kirsten recalls, "Debbie was very inspiring. She said, to both Gabby and me, 'Not only does your voice matter, but, as women, you can weigh in in ways that can help move an issue. Because we're women  because we're mothers  we have a different perspective, a different lens. We're able to bring people together, to consensus-build.' "

The admiration between the women was mutual. "Kirsten was a ball of fire!" Debbie says. "She was so similar to me  neither of us has ever done anything halfway. Sometimes, when two women are so similar, it's not a good thing, but in our case we rooted for each other from the beginning."

Debbie, a New York State native, had discovered her calling when she attended the University of Florida, falling in love with Florida and politics. At 26, she became the state's youngest-ever female Representative. Kirsten was, in a sense, born to the political life. Her grandmother, Polly Noonan, was a secretary without a college education. "But she wanted to have a say in local government, and she wanted other women to have one, too," Kirsten recalls. So Noonan developed, from scratch, a powerful envelope-stuffing, phone-banking political operation of local women in Albany, NY, known as "Polly's Girls." She became president of the local Women's Democratic Club and a confidante of Albany's mayor. As a child, Kirsten Elizabeth Rutnik  then known as Tina  affixed bumper stickers on cars with the feisty Noonan and learned, at her grandmother's boisterous kitchen table, the joy of politics. "I was never afraid of the roughness of it," she says.

After graduating with honors from Dartmouth, Kirsten studied in China (and became fluent in Mandarin), got her law degree at UCLA, and, while working at a New York City law firm, met British venture capitalist Jonathan Gillibrand at a party after she'd begged off their originally scheduled blind date because she had to work late. Jonathan was set to return to the U.K. after receiving his M.B.A. from Columbia University. But they fell in love; he stayed in America, and they married in New York City's St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic church in 2001. Their son Theo was born in 2003.

Kirsten ran for Congress during the same 2006 cycle as Gabby. She remembers seeing Gabby being interviewed on TV the day after the election and "being incredibly impressed. I couldn't wait to meet her." There were events for the freshman Congressional class, but the two women had their own orientation with Debbie. "The three of us became immediately close," Kirsten says. "We're all fighters. We're all policy wonks. We're all consensus builders." They would talk about substantive issues  and make private jokes about Congress still being a Good Ol' Boys Club "all the time, all the time," Kirsten says, with the delight of a woman who knows her time has come. They had so much in common, but the deep trust and loyalty that blossomed among them, in a town where the term "friend" is thrown around lightly, felt like nothing short of a gift. As Debbie puts it, "Our friendship is a refuge."

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